1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to headwear and, more particularly, to a headwear piece having a crown and a rim projecting angularly away from an external surface of the crown.
2. Background Art
One of the most popular pieces of headwear is the baseball-style cap. The baseball-style cap has an inverted, cup-shaped crown to receive the head of a wearer and a forwardly projecting bill/rim which is directed angularly away from the crown at a front portion thereof. Baseball-style caps have continued to evolve, appealing to an ever-increasing base of consumers. What once was designed primarily for baseball players has become regular garb for many on a day-to-day basis.
The popularity of the baseball-style cap has made it the focus of many headwear designers. While the basic configuration has remained the same over the decades, many modifications have been devised in terms of the materials used to construct the cap, the manner of assembling the cap, the adornment thereon, etc. The market for baseball-style caps is highly competitive and continues to inspire those involved therein to make new developments to appeal to an even larger consumer group.
One particularly desirable feature of the baseball-style cap is that, while highly functional, it has an unobtrusive configuration and is light in weight. The crown affords the wearer an effective barrier against the elements, with the rim, in addition to shielding the user's face from rain, and the like, shades the user's eyes from sunlight in a manner that does not significantly obstruct the user's forward and peripheral vision.
By reason of its construction, the baseball-style cap also lends itself to being compactly transported by the wearer, when not in use. Typically, the crown is constructed from sewn cloth gores. The crown can be very simply folded or pressed into a compact state. Once the cap is replaced on the wearer's head, the crown assumes a neat conforming shape that generally does not appear wrinkled, creased, or otherwise disfigured to evidence the compaction.
The most significant impediment to compaction of the baseball-style cap is the rim. Typically, the rim includes a core layer that is sufficiently shape retentive that the crown will have a relatively consistent, bowed shape which produces a convex curvature at the top, exposed surface of the rim. It is common to construct the core layer of the rim from plastic, cardboard, or other like material that tends to retain a shape into which it is formed at manufacture.
In competition with the objective of having a shape-retaining rim is that of allowing the rim to be reconfigured compactly when the headwear is not in use. Ideally, the rim would be either foldable or rollable towards, or into, a compact cylindrical shape around a fore-and-aft axis. However, as the rim is folded or bent towards the cylindrical shape, there is a significant resistance due to the stiff nature of the material defining the core layer of the rim. As a result, a significant compaction of the rim may cause a permanent deformation of the core layer. In a worst case, the core layer may rupture. In either event, a permanent deformation of the rim may be imparted, which detracts significantly from the appearance of the cap.
One solution to this problem is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 6,076,192, owned by the assignee herein. In this patent, the core of the bill/rim is made from a resilient layer which has shape-retentive characteristics but is also readily conformable.
The industry continues to seek out rim constructions that will be sufficiently shape retentive to maintain a desired appearance for the headwear, yet which can be deformed for compaction, as when it is desired to store or transport the cap.